Firstly:
I like the idea of Rangers relying largely on their pet. I would not change that as I feel it defines the class in a far more interesting way than “Bow User” or “Spirit Guy”.
This is the direction the developer has taken, but the implementation has been sloppy.
Problems:
In late-game content, there are a lot of very dangerous abilities/attacks that enemies can kill a player with almost instantly. The way players avoid death is through things that negate damage entirely such as invulnerability, dodging, blocking, evasion, blindness, etc. Pets can only negate incoming damage if their foe is blinded (a condition that does not affect many hard-hitting enemies such as bosses) or with the use of Signet of Stone (120sec untraited cooldown). For this reason, pets cannot keep themselves alive in end-game content.
Pet AI does not act in the interest of self-preservation and pet controls do not offer enough micromanagement options for the player to keep the pet alive.
Suggestions:
1 – Replace the current F3 with a ground-targeted command that would instantly cancel the pet’s current action and cause it to perform a dodge-roll-like maneuver (note that the pet need not actually role as that would look silly. A lunge may be more appropriate) and after a single dodge that would allow for evasion the same way dodging does, the pet would walk normally to the location targeted and then resume its aggressive AI.
This new F3 would either:
Have a short cooldown.
or
Have no cooldown, but instead draw from a pet stamina bar for the initial dodge, being unable to do the dodge when the bar had been depleted, but still follow the movement command.
This change would allow a ranger who was attentive to their pet’s position to save their pet from the dangerous attacks/abilities that would otherwise kill half of their damage output with no way of preventing this.
2 – Add the immediate action cancel effect to the F2 abilities, causing them to trigger instantly upon activation rather than waiting for any attacks/movements to finish. Remove any AI that commands the pet to move into range for its F2 ability and instead let the player move the pet into range manually using either F1 on the desired target or F3 near the target.
This should make pets feel more responsive in general and allow some of the more reactive abilities (such as blinding slash or intimidating howl) to be used when they are both needed and useful.
3 – Allow a player to stow their pet indefinitely, but DO NOT compensate their individual damage output in any way. A ranger with his/her pet stowed should be less effective than a ranger with his/her pet active. This feature would be solely to prevent pets from getting in the way. The stow ability should only be available when out of combat to prevent players using it to save dying pets (this should only be done by F3).
